"Infamous will in fact now serve as the reigning shibboleth (or "test word", or giveaway). Anyone who uses it loosely, as I did, is making the following announcement: I write without much care and without much feeling. I just write like other people write" This is good, and sweet at the same time; nice to see a man's cares expressed so well by his son, who's not being an ass for once.

"More important: the game, Sand-dancer, is a good game. It is not the sort of example that exists to have one of everything in the manual. It is the sort of game that exists to make IF better. Aaron puts it together on your workbench. You can see the parts going in, and I don't mean rules and action constructs now; I mean character, background, voice, theme, and narrative drive. He explains what he's doing, and what each game element is for. He talks about story structure and shape of interactivity. He discusses what you have to do to get the player involved and what you have to do to put the player in control." This sounds great. Add-to-cart.

"I want all the young present-tense storytellers (the old ones have won prizes and are incorrigible) to allow themselves to stand back and show me a wider temporal perspective. I want them to feel able to say what happened, what usually happened, what sometimes happened, what had happened before something else happened, what might happen later, what actually did happen later, and so on: to use the full range of English tenses." There's lots in here. I think it might be good; it is definitely interesting, and worth returning to.

"In this programme we hear from colleagues, friends and former students as well as the great man himself about the beauty of nature and the importance of science to our understanding of the world." A lovely Archive Hour on Radio 4, on Richard Feynman; only available for a few more days, so grab it whilst you can. Delightful, and nicely structured.

"The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people's grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I'd normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world." Lovely. I would like an alot of my own one day.

"This is a selected list of gairaigo, Japanese words originating or based on foreign language (generally Western) terms, including wasei-eigo (Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms)." One of my new favourite Wikipedia pages; there is some fascinating stuff in here.

"You've already received more letters from me than any living relative of mine has received to date. Truly, hope all is well with you and high school isn't as painful as I portray it. Believe in yourself. Think about the future once a day and keep doing what you're doing. Because I'm impressed. My regards to the family. Don't let a day pass without a kind thought about them." For many years, Alison Fields was penpals with John Hughes. This is a lovely story.

"…after careful consideration [the editors in charge of style guidelines at the NYT] decided to alter our style. As of now, the spelling whisky will be used not only for Scotch but for Canadian liquor as well. The spelling whiskey will be used for all appropriate liquors from other sources." As it should be.

"…using these guidelines, and building on the experience of much more knowledgeable type gurus, I have compiled a list of font stacks that will both open up more font possibilities for web designers, and hopefully offer more appropriate substitutes:" That's interesting; not sure how appropriate it is, but they're good uses of the cascade, by and large.

"Toine Manders, the Dutch liberal MEP who drafted the report, said: "Video games are in most cases not dangerous. We heard evidence from experts on computer games and psychologists from France, the US, Germany and the Netherlands and they told us that video games have a positive contribution to make to the education of minors."" Etcetera.

"It’s a scrolling arcade beat ‘em up in the Final Fight-style based within the Watchmen universe. Just like Alan would have wanted." I know, I know. But: it has charm, it's LittleLoud, and it's not like it's setting out to be canon narrative! It's pretending to be a passable arcade game from a long while ago. So I'm going to give it a break (unlike that horrible 3D beat-em-up that's coming out, that looks like it's trying to be Like The Movie).

"Japanese PSN member RRR30000 has managed to recreate classic shoot-em up gameplay within the game, using a spaceship sticker and massive amounts of free time." Just. Incredible. The enemies-on-sticks have a vast amount of charm, too. I don't think I can escape buying the PS3 this demands, sadly.

"The original page, which sadly has since then disappered from the face of the earth, was all about this hidden "demon face" in one of Aphex Twin's tracks, #2 (the long formula) on "Windowlicker". This face was supposed to be viewable with a spectrograph program, so I decided to try it myself." Some fun – and somewhat impressive – decoding of hidden imagery on IDM cds. The Venetian Snares cats are particiuarly great.

Well, as long as they ban every other imported phrase. Stupid as this is, I think the comment that it's "the linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing" is a bit of an absurd, and somewhat insensitive, overstatement.

"Dante's Inferno, the poem, explores the Christian afterlife, as Dante traipses through nine circles of Hell to get to Purgatory and eventually Heaven. EA will apparently interpret this as fighting supernatural baddies." Oh bloody hell.